"These extremists began demanding places to lie down during weekend-long conferences, and organisers were harangued by women claiming to have ME—myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome—which I began to call me, me, me." quillette.com/2026/09/28/les…

I really disagree with this wholesale condemnation of Islam. Given the Islamist terror suffered in the West – almost all of which I have seen first-hand as a reporter – mass immigration from the Middle East can only be a source of deep concern for many Jews and Gentiles alike. Jonathan is right about that. The problem of murderous radicalism in the Islamic world is real, disturbing and extensive, and we continue to ignore it to our peril. As @TrevorPTweets, former head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, once wrote, the integration of Muslims will probably be ‘the hardest task we have ever faced’. However, although ignoring the soaring levels of bigotry in contemporary Muslim societies is a folly that their first victims cannot afford to indulge, both past and recent history shows that there is nothing inherent in Islam that condemns its followers to absorb antisemitism or hate the West. Those who doubt such integration is possible must consider the example of Israel. That country evokes more Islamic hostility than any other, but at the same time, its offer of equality in a free society, together with its confidence in its own peoplehood, are strong enough to have gained the loyalty of a significant number of its Muslim citizens. On October 7 — when fifteen Muslim Israelis were butchered alongside more than a thousand Jews — heroic Arab Israelis risked their lives to protect their Jewish compatriots. As the country reeled in the aftermath, Alaa Amara, an Arab bicycle shop owner from Tayibe in central Israel, donated fifty children’s bikes to evacuees from the south. When his shop was burned down by extremists in an act of retribution, a crowdfunding campaign raised more than $150,000 to rebuild it. After October 7, examples of Jewish-Muslim solidarity were hardly limited to Mr Amara and his bicycles. Three days after the atrocities, the Internet star @nasdaily, who has millions of followers, wrote a column headlined, ‘I identified as Palestinian-Israeli but now I’m Israeli first.’ The next day, the popular Arab-Israeli news anchor @lucyaharish — who personally oversaw the rescue of two families on October 7 — called for national unity in a monologue to camera. ‘We, the citizens of the state of Israel, all of us, left and right, secular and religious, Jews, Christians, Druze, Muslims, minorities and immigrants from all over the world, stand united together in this fight,’ she said. When Iman Khatib-Yasin, an Islamist member of the Knesset, publicly doubted the ‘rape of women’ and ‘slaughtering of babies’ by Hamas, she was summarily ordered to resign by @mnsorabbas, the leader of the United Arab List, Israel’s main conservative Muslim political party. @CaptainElla1, the most senior Arab Muslim woman in Israel’s army, recorded a powerful message for social media. ‘We are all together defending and protecting our homeland and our state,’ she said. ‘We are all Israeli, and we know why we are fighting.’ She signed off with a salute: ‘Long live Israel.’ Such examples can only shed a sceptical light on views such as were famously expressed by General Charles de Gaulle: ‘Those who advocate integration have the brains of hummingbirds, no matter how learned they are. Try mixing oil and vinegar. Shake the bottle. After a while, they’ll separate again. Arabs are Arabs, the French are French. Do you think the French body can absorb ten million Muslims, who tomorrow will be twenty million and the day after tomorrow forty?’ For all the great difficulties of integration, patriotic Muslim Israelis like these, and those like them in Britain and across the democracies — including the great many who have served and continue to serve their countries in uniform — prove that although turning the tide may be an almost crippling challenge from where we now stand, a better future is not completely out of the question. Perhaps the hummingbird holds some wisdom. As the French philosopher @BHL told me when he appeared in an episode of my podcast @The_Brink_: ‘The problem is not Islam. The clash of civilisations is not between the West and Islam, it is inside Islam, between the radicals and the moderates. This is a battle which concerns the Muslims, but it also concerns us. We should support those in the Islamic world who argue for our values and consider that our values are not ours, that democracy does not belong to Europe, that democracy is a universal value. ‘Democracy is not only found in the West. It would exist in Hong Kong if it had not been hijacked and taken over by China, and there remains a movement of dissidents there who oppose authoritarianism. It can be found in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. I hope that there will be some young Muslim women and men who are wise enough to leave the radicals to their stupidness and to understand that this is the battle of their life. For them, there are existential questions. Do they accept the rule of radical Islam or do they reject it? Should they live under this iron rule or not? Why should they? They can be Muslims in a secular society, as the Catholics are Catholic and the Jews are Jews, without being a slave of the clerics.’ The way forward may be clear, but the climb is steep. Any progress we hope to make rests upon a renewed grasp of our values and the confidence to insist upon them. After all, newcomers cannot integrate if there is nothing into which to integrate. Whichever way you look at it, a strong national story is the root of a better future. How can moderate Muslims be expected to stand up to the radicals when they see hordes of leftwing Britons tacitly supporting Hamas on the streets of our capitals, our liberal broadcasters amplifying jihadi propaganda and our politicians working hand-in-hand with Islamists to outlaw ‘Islamophobia’ as a euphemism for blasphemy? As the brilliant writer @Ed_Husain, who was a committed Islamist extremist in his youth, put it: ‘If British policy makers and elected officials are content to tolerate intolerance, and give a platform to those who are committed to destroying democracy and advocate religion-based separatism, why should a minority Muslim population turn on its own?’ Refusing to let go of optimism is vital but we must not downplay the vast and complex scale of the challenge. Sir Trevor Phillips was right: This may very well be the hardest test of Britain and the West. In the long term, healing this social malaise will require little less than a cultural reformation. But the work must start now. To read more on the topic, get hold of my book, Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself. There’s a whole chapter on Islam. Link below. amazon.co.uk/Never-Again-Wes…